Developing a Way with Words
Some of the names in the story are those of people in North Bennington (e.g., Percy, from the family name Percey). However, many names have a more general significance. Some (e.g., Adams and Eva) are easy to recognize. For others (e.g., Tessie) you may need to consult a special dictionary of biography, or family names, or saints' names.
(All three kinds of dictionaries can be found in any good English-language library.)
1. How many of the following names can you find an association for?
Graves —As an adjective, "grave" means serious. What does it mean as a noun?
Summers —What seasonal association does this name have? The name is really derived from an occupation— summoner. What did the English summoners summon people to do? (A dictionary of names will provide the information.)
Warner —If a summoner summons, what does a warner do?
Adams and Eva —What Old Testament characters have similar names?
Little Dave/Davy —What Old Testament character also threw small stones?
Delacroix —What does this mean in French? What association does that have?
Harry Jones —What does harry mean as a verb? Who is "the old Harry"? What does the sailors' term "Davy Jones' locker" refer to?
Hutchinson —In Colonial American history, who was Anne Hutchinson?
Tessie (nickname for Teresa or Theresa)— Who was St. Theresa of Avila? Who was Therese Martin (St. Therese of Liseux)?
2. For a writing project, discuss three or four of the names in terms of their origin and their significance in the story.
UNIT 9
CYNTHIA OZICK
THE SHAWL
Stella, cold, cold, the coldness of hell. How they walked on the roads together. Rosa with Magda curled up between sore breasts, Magda wound up in the shawl. Sometimes Stella carried Magda. But she was jealous of Magda. A thin girl of fourteen, too small, with thin breasts of her own, Stella wanted to be wrapped in a shawl, hidden away, asleep, rocked by the march, a baby, a round infant in arms. Magda took Rosa’s nipple, and Rosa never stopped walking, a walking cradle. There was not enough milk; sometimes Magda sucked air; then she screamed. Stella was ravenous. Her knees were tumors on sticks, her elbows chicken bones.
Rosa did not feel hunger; she felt light, not like someone walking but like someone in a faint; in trance,
arrested in a fit, someone who is already a floating angel, alert and seeing everything, but in the air, not there, not touching the road. As if teetering on the tips of her fingernails. She looked into Magda's face through a gap in the shawl: a squirrel in a nest, safe, no one could reach her inside the little house of the shawl's windings. The face, very round, a pocket mirror of a face: but it was not Rosa's bleak complexion, dark like сholега, it was another kind of face altogether, eyes blue as air, smooth feathers of hair nearly as yellow as the Star sewn into Rosa's coat. You could think she was one of their babies.
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Rosa, floating, dreamed of giving Magda away in one of the villages. She could leave the line for a minute and push Magda into the hands of any woman on the.side of the road. But if she moved out of line they might shoot. And even if she fled the line for half a second and pushed the shawl-bundle at a stranger, would the woman take it? She might be surprised, or afraid; she might drop the shawl, and Magda would fall out and strike her head and die. The little round head. Such a good child, she gave up screaming, and sucked now only for the taste of the drying nipple itself. The neat grip of the tiny gums. One mite of a tooth tip sticking up in the bottom gum, how shining, an elfin tombstone of white marble,.gleaming there. Without complaining, Magda relinquished Rosa's teats, first the left, then the right; both were cracked, not a sniff of milk. The duct crevice extinct, a dead-volcano, blind eye, chilly hole, so Magda took the corner of the shawl and milked it instead. She sucked and sucked, flooding the threads with wetness. The shawl's good flavor, milk of linen.
It was a magic shawl, it could nourish an infant for three days and three, nights. Magda did not die, she
stayed alive, although very quiet. A peculiar smell, of cinnamon and almonds, lifted out other mouth. She held her eyes open every moment, forgetting how to blink or nap, and Rosa and sometimes Stella studied their blueness. On the road they raised one burden of a leg after another and Studied Magda's face. "Aryan," Stella said, in a voice grown as thin as a string; and Rosa thought how Stella gazed at Magda like a young cannibal. And the time that Stella said “Aryan;” it sounded to Rosa as if Stella had really said “Let us devour her”
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But Magda lived to walk. She lived that long, but she did not walk very well, partly because she was only
fifteen months old, and partly because the spindles of her legs could not hold up her fat belly. It was fat with air, full and round. Rosa gave almost all her food to Magda, Stella gave nothing; Stella was ravenous, a growing child herself, but not growing much. Stella did not menstruate. Rosa did not menstruate. Rosa was ravenous, but also not; she learned from Magda how to drink the taste of a finger in one’s mouth. They were in a place without pity. She was sure that Stella was waiting for Magda to die so she could pierce teeth into the little thighs.
Rosa knew Magda was going to die very soon; she should have been dead already, but she had been buried
away deep inside the magic shawl, mistaken there for the shivering mould of Rosa’s breast; Rosa clung to the shawl as if it covered only herself. No one took it away from her. Magda was mute. She never cried. Rosa hid her in the barracks, under the shawl, but she knew that one day someone would inform; or one day someone, not even Stella, would steal Magda to eat her. When Magda began to walk Rosa knew that Magda was going to die very soon, something would happen. She was afraid to fall asleep; she slept with the weight of her thigh on Magda’s body; she was afraid she would smother Magda under her thigh. The weight of Rosa was becoming less and less. Rosa and Stella were slowly turning into air.
Magda was quiet, but her eyes were horribly alive, like blue tigers. She watched. Sometimes she laughed – it
seemed a laugh, but how could it be? Magda had never seen anyone laugh. Still, Magda laughed at her shawl when the wind blew its corners, the bad wind with pieces of black in it, that made Stella’s and Rosa’s eyes tear. Magda’s eyes were always clear and tearless. She watched like a tiger. Stella was not allowed. The shawl was Magda’s own baby, her pat, her little sister. She tangled herself up in it and sucked on one of the corners when she wanted to be very still.
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Then Stella took the shawl away and made Magda die.
Afterwards Srella said: “I was cold.”
And afterwards she was always cold, always. The cold went into her heart: Rosa knew that Stella’s heart was cold. Magda flopped onward with her little pencil legs moving this way and that, in search of the shawl; the pencils faltered at the barracks opening, where the light began. Rosa saw and pursued. But already Magda was in the square outside the barracks, in the jolly light. It was the roll-call arena. Every morning Rosa had to conceal Magda under the shawl against a wall of the barracks and go out and stand in the arena with Stella and hundreds of others, sometimes for hours, and Magda, deserted, was quiet under the shawl, sucking on her corner. …Ever since the drying up of Rosa’s nipples, ever since Magda's last scream on the road, Mayda had been devoid of any syllable; Magda was a mute. Rosa believed that something had gone wrong with her vocal cords, with her windpipe, with the cave of her larynx; Magda was defective, without a voice; perhaps she was deaf; there might be something amiss with her intelligence; Magda was dumb. Even the laugh that came when the ash-stippled wind made a clown out of Magda's shawl was only the air-blown showing of her teeth. Even when the lice, head lice and body lice, crazed her so that she became as wild as one of the big rats that plundered the barracks at daybreak looking for carrion,sherubbed and scratched and kicked and bit and rolled without a whimper. "But now Magda's mouth was spilling a long viscous rope of clamor.
"Maaaa—"
It was the first noise Magda had ever sent out from her throat since the drying up of Rosa's nipples.
"Maaaa... aaa!"
Again! Magda was wavering in the perilous sunlight of the arena, scribbling on such pitiful little bent shins. Rosa saw. She saw that Magda was grieving for the loss of her shawl, she saw that Magda was going to die. A tide of commands hammered in Rosa's nipples: Fetch, get, bring! But she did not know which to go after first, Magda or the shawl. If she jumped out into the arena to snatch Magda up, the howling would not stop, because Magda would still not have the shawl; but if she ran back into the barracks to find the shawl, and if she found it, and if she came after Magda holding it and shaking it, then she would get Magda back, Magda would put the shawl in her mouth and turn dumb again.
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Rosa entered the dark. It was easy to discover the shawl. Stella was heaped under it, asleep in her thin bones. Rosa tore the shawl free and flew—she could fly, she was only air—into the arena. The sunheat murmured of another life, of butterflies in summer. The light was placid, mellow. On the other side of the steel fence, far away, there were green meadows speckled with dandelions and deep-colored violets; beyond them, even farther, innocent tiger lilies, tall, lifting their orange bonnets. In the barracks they spoke of "flowers," of "rain": excrement, thick turd-braids, and the slow stinking maroon waterfall that slunk, down from the upper bunks, the stink mixed with a bitter fatty floating smoke that greased Rosa's skin. She stood for an instant at the margin of the arena. Sometimes the electricity inside the fence would seem to hum; even Stella said it was only an imagining, but Rosa heard real sounds in the wire: grainy sad voices. The farther she was from the fence, the more clearly the voices crowded at her. The lamenting voices strummed so convincingly, so passionately, it was impossible to suspect them of being phantoms. The voices told her to hold up the shawl, high; the voices told her to shake it, to whip with it, to unfurl it like a flag. Rosa lifted, shook, whipped, unfurled. Far off, very far, Magda leaned across her air-fed belly, reaching out with the rods of her arms. She was high up, elevated, riding someone's shoulder. But the shoulder that carried Magda was not coming toward Rosa and the shawl, it was drifting away, the speck of Magda was moving more and more into the smoky distance. Above the shoulder a helmet glinted. The light capped the helmet and sparkled it into a goblet. Below the helmet a black body like a domino and a pair of black boots hurled themselves in the direction of the electrified fence. The electric voices began to chatter wildly. "Maamaa, maaamaaa," they all hummed together. How far Magda was from Rosa now, across the whole square, past a dozen barracks, all the way on the other side! She was no bigger than a moth.
All at once Magda was swimming through the air. The whole of Magda traveled through loftiness. She looked like a butterfly touching a silver vine And the moment Magda's feathered round head and her pencil legs and balloonish belly and zigzag arms splashed against the fence, the steel voices went mad in their growling, urging Rosa to run and run to the spot where Magda had fallen from her flight against the electrified fence; but of course Rosa did not obey them. She only stood, because if she ran they would shoot, and if she tried to pick up the sticks of Magda's body they would shoot, and if she let the wolf's screech ascending now through the ladder of her skeleton break out, they would shoot; so she took Magda's shawl and filled her own mouth with it, stuffed it in and stuffed it in, until she was swallowing up the wolf’s screech and tasting the cinnamon and almond depth of Magda's saliva; and Rosa drank Magda's shawl until it died.
[ 1980 – U.S.A.]
CONSULT the dictionary to find out the meaning of the following words:
curled up rocked by the march nipple cradle
ravenous tumor to teeter bundle
mite to relinquish sniff teat
duct crevice extinct to devour
to smother spindler larynx to plunder
carrion whimper clamor perilous
placid speckle maroon lamenting
goblet to hurl to growl saliva
QUESTIONS
1. What situation are we sent to witness?
2. Wher is the story set and ehy is the setting not spelled out?
3. Why is the shawl called “magic”? to whom is it so? Why is the titile not “The Magic Shawl”?
4. Why the deadpan narration? (Note that the narrator makes no direct comment nor expresses indignity or horror. And the description is understated, with most of the dreadful details – such as the state of the barracks – played down.)
5. Why the odd coupling of highly poetic imagery (for ex., “she looked like a butterfly touching a silver vine”) and savagery?
6. Bearing in mind these three characters, who of them carries the burden of responsibility most? Why?
7. What idea does the author incarnate?
8. Speculate on the conflicts and contrasts of the story?
9. Search for symbols and implications.
10. What details help to creat the atmosphere of eternal suffering?
TEST On Analytical Reading
I. Identify the correct SD according to its definition:
1) the clash of two opposite meanings within the same context –
2) a deliberate exaggeration of some quantity, quality, size, etc. –
3) the use of a word in the same grammatical but different semantic relations to two adjacent words in the context –
4) the re-naming of an object by a phrase that brings out some particular feature of the object –
5) an arrangement of sentences (or of the homogeneous parts of one sentence) which secures a gradual increase in significance, importance, or emotional tension in the utterance –
6) a SD consisting of a peculiar use of negative constructions –
7) a combination of speech-sounds which aims at imitating sounds produced in nature, by things, by people and by animals –
8) transference of meaning on the basis of contiguity –
9) transference of meaning on the basis of similarity and association –
10) a SD based on the interaction of 2 well-known meanings of a word or phrase –
11) a word or phrase expressing some quality of a person, thing or idea –
12) a combination of 2 antonymous words (mostly an adjective and a noun or an adverb with an adjective) in one syntagma –
13) words we use when we express our feelings strongly and which may be said to exist in lg as conversational symbols of human emotions –
14) if a SD involves likeness between inanimate and animate objects –
15) the interplay between the logical and nominal meanings of a word, the two kinds of meaning must be materialized in the context simultaneously –
16) an indirect reference, by word or phrase, to a historical, literary, mythological, biblical fact or to a fact of everyday life made in the course of speaking or writing –
17) a structure consisting of two steps, the lexical meanings of which are opposite to each other –
18) a SD by which separate things, objects, phenomena, properties, actions are named one by one so that they produce a chain –
19) the essence of this device lies in the repetition of similar sounds, in particular consonant sounds, in close succession, particularly at the beginnings of successive words –
20) repetition involving the whole structure of the sentence –
21) repetition of conjunctions or connecting words –
22) if the repeated word comes at the beginning of 2 or more sentences or phrases we have –
23) when the initial parts of a paragraph are repeated at the end of it we have –
24) the structure of this device is the following the last word or phrase of one part of an utterance is repeated at the beginning of the next part, thus hooking the two parts together –
25) a statement in the form of a question which presupposes the possible answer –
26) parts of structures (secondary parts of a sentence) by some specific consideration of writer placed so that it seemed formally independent of the word they logically refer to –
27) a SD that offers no conjunctions or connecting words –
28) a stopping shot for rhetorical effect –
29) intentional violation of the graphical shape of a word used to reflect its authentic pronunciation –
30) when the shape, size, dimensions, etc of the object are intentionally underrated we deal with –
II Identify the type(s) of each figure of speech/syntactical or lexical expressive means in the following examples:
1) The lamenting voices strummed so convincingly, so passionately, it was impossible to suspect them of being phantoms.
a) antitheses b) metonymy c) synecdoche d) personification e) metaphor
2) Far off, very far, Magda leaned across her air-fed belly, reaching out with the rods of her arms.
a) personification b)metaphor c) reversed epithet d) metonymy e) transferred epithet
3) The shoulder that carried Magda was not coming toward Rosa ….
a) metaphor b) synecdoche c) metonymy d) personification e) zeugma
4) She was no bigger than a moth.
a)metaphor b) epithet c) personification d) simile e) understatement
5) And the moment Magda's feathered round head and her pencil legs and balloonish belly and zigzag arms splashed against the fence…
a) epithets b) metaphors c) periphrasis d) hyperbole e) metonymy
6) Drives, dinners, theatres, balls, suppers, with the gilding of superfluous wealth over all.
a) parallelism b) ellipse c) anticlimax d) enumeration
7) No more the tepees; no more the wild stretch of prairie, no mere the bed of buffalo hide…
a) parallelism b) anaphora c) climax d) enumeration
8) He let smoke wander from his nose, through the hairs of his ears and head.
a) metaphor b) lg-as-a-system c) metonymy d) personification
9) Off came his shirt. Off came his boots.
a) enumeration b) ellipse c) set phrase d) inversion
10) They left no nook or corner unexplored.
a) onomatopoeia b) allusion c) alliteration d) litotes
11) Well! Must be off sport. Be seeing you in a fortnight. You got your juice and grub, didn’t you?
a) bookish b) colloquialism c) slang d) set phrase
12) He strode back to the truck and pressed the shrill endless horn that traveled over the dunes.
a) personification b)metaphor c) epithet d) metonymy
13) She dropped a tear and her pocket handkerchief.
a) ellipsis b) nominative sentences c) asyndeton d) zeugma
14) Rosa never stopped walking, a walking cradle.
a) metaphor b) personification c) metaphorical periphrasis d) metonymy
15) She looked into Magda's face through a gap in the shawl: a squirrel in a nest, safe, no one could reach her inside the little house of the shawl's windings.
a) synecdoche b) metaphor c) personification d) metaphorical periphrasis
16) The duct crevice extinct, a dead-volcano, blind eye, chilly hole, so Magda took the corner of the shawl and milked it instead.
a) synonymical metaphors b) metonymies c) synecdoche d) epithets
17) She sucked and sucked, flooding the threads with wetness. The shawl's good flavor, milk of linen.
a) metaphor b) reversed epithet c) hyperbole d) metonymy
18) It was a magic shawl, it could nourish an infant for three days and three, nights.
a) personification b)metaphor c) epithet d) hyperbole
19) Magda flopped onward with her little pencil legs moving this way and that, in search of the shawl; the pencils faltered at the barracks opening, where the light began.
a) metaphor b) synecdoche c) metonymy d) personification
20) A tide of commands hammered in Rosa's nipples: Fetch, get, bring!
a) personification b)metaphor c) epithet d) metonymy
21) Rosa tore the shawl free and flew—she could fly, she was only air—into the arena.
a) personification b)metaphor c) oximoron d) metonymy
22) In the barracks they spoke of "flowers," of "rain": excrement, thick turd-braids, and the slow stinking maroon waterfall that slunk, down from the upper bunks, the stink mixed with a bitter fatty floating smoke that greased Rosa's skin.
a) antitheses b) contrast c) anticlimax d) irony
23) Was it an hour ago she had waited by the entrance, wearing her hope like a corsage at her belt?
a) epithet b) personification c) simile d) synecdoche
24) When the funicular came to rest those new to it stirred in suspension between the blues of two heavens.
a) metaphor b) personification c) simile d) hyperbole
25) Upon it floated swans like boats and boats like swans, both lost in the nothingness of the heartless beauty.
a) framing b) antithesis c) anaphora d) reduplication
26) He looked at her for a moment, she lived in the bright blue worlds of his eyes, eagerly and confidently.
a) metaphor b) personification c) simile d) synecdoche
27) The color is brown—brown plains of brown dirt, brown weeds rolling off north, south, east, west with a brown road slashing across them.
a) anaphora b) framing c) reduplication d) climax e) prolepsis
28) And first, in the security bred of many harmless marriages, it had been forgotten that Love is no hot-house flower, but a wild plant, born of a wet night, born of an hour of sunshine …
a) personification b) metaphor c) synecdoche d) inversion e) epithet
29) He lay very high, on the back of the world. The earth thrilled beneath him. Red flowers grew through his flesh; their stiff leaves rustled by his head.
a) metaphor b) personification c) epithet d) allusion e) simile
30) The blue plastic beneath the colorless water tried to make a cheerful, otherworldly statement, but Linda saw that the pool in truth had no bottom, it held bottomless loss, it was one huge blue tear.
a) metaphor b) personification c) epithet d) allusion e) simile
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